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by How Like a Winter
Summary: Sometimes Richard suspected that events on the Island were initiated by Jacob as little tests, just to see what Richard would do. Those involving the Island's children — say, young Ben or Alex — were often the most difficult of all. One-shot.


**Choose**

Even while not responsible for directly leading the Others, Richard's duties included everything from advising the current leader to fetching Jacob's lists, and sometimes his position as second-in-command required him to make difficult decisions. Once, Richard had stared down at the face of an injured boy in his arms and wondered what to do with it—no, him. Benjamin Linus had seen to it that he could hardly be relegated to the word _it_.

Some decisions, like that one, were so uncertain that Richard deliberated on them for weeks. But he found that it is impossible to weigh the scales objectively while one watches the tiny chest rise and fall, but to an irregular rhythm, one that threatens to end in a heartbeat. Judgment, he learned, is so easily clouded, when the weight of a child fills the arms so easily as though always meant to rest there. As he brushed the dark, messy hair off little Ben's forehead and gazed at the lidded eyes underneath, well, the decision had already been made.

But maybe Jacob was just playing with him again. Sometimes Richard suspected that events on the Island were initiated by Jacob as little tests, just to see what Richard would do. After all, Jacob had never been able to decide for himself in the past. He delighted in giving others that opportunity to choose, though the decisions were often difficult and, at times, nearly cruel.

Even if it was just part of some game, Richard was never more proud than the day Ben revealed that same willingness to take a risk for the sake of a child.

Richard would never forget that night, when he woke up to the sound of a baby crying. It had been so long since anyone had seen a living, breathing infant on the Island, ever since the pregnancy deaths started and the mothers wouldn't even try to bear children anymore. At first the sound didn't register in his ears, and he turned over on the mat, dragging the blankets over his head, but when the piercing wail only grew louder he remembered: _Alex_. And he supposed that he should probably lend Ben a hand, doubting that anyone else was about to.

When he lifted the flap to Ben's tent, he stifled a chuckle at the sight of the young man holding the baby, gently bouncing her in his arms and tripping over hushed words in an effort to comfort her.

"Need a hand?"

Immediately Ben's head snapped up and he spun around, but breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Richard. Offering one of those tiny, quaint smiles, he held out the baby and said, "Be my guest."

While Richard had never raised an infant, and in fact rescuing the young Ben was the closest thing that came to it, he had seen enough mothers in the past, in the days when they yielded children without fear. Usually they were born with blue eyes, but with Alex in his arms, he noticed that the tearful pair was a chocolate brown. How unusual, he mused, and decided that it was only fitting for a child of Ben's, or at least, child who would now be raised by him.

"Well, are you going to do something?"

At any other time, Ben's impatience would have irritated Richard, but as he watched Ben stare at the entrance to the tent, forehead creased with worry, Richard understood that the other man feared what would happen if Widmore awoke to the baby's sobs. "Are you sure it isn't—" As Alex squirmed, a tiny finger grazed Richard's cheek. "Could she be hungry?"

"One of the women fed her earlier." Well, that was good, because Richard certainly couldn't assist in that area and he didn't really have any idea how to approach a woman and ask them to help with Alex, especially at this hour. He suspected that her fussing was from drowsiness, if nothing else. How to coax her into sleep, then?

As he glanced back from Ben to Alex, she locked eyes with him, and they looked at each other for a long moment. No longer crying, she slowly stretched out her arm to the side and opened her hand. With his free hand, Richard reached out to meet her hand, and she circled her fingers around his pinkie. Gently he closed his hand around hers, and at that instant, Alex closed her eyes and breathed steadily.

"Well, if I'd known you were so good with children I would've asked you to come up here myself. I apologize if Alex woke you."

"Don't worry about it." Richard bent over and rested Alex on the pile of blankets that Ben must have set up for her. "See if you can't get someone to make her some kind of crib."

"Right, of course."

"See you in the morning, Ben." As he started to leave, Richard stole one last glance at the sleeping girl.

When Ben saw that, he smiled fully this time and said quietly, "She's beautiful."

"Yes, she is. If I can be of any assistance again, just let me know."

"Thank you, Richard."

It wasn't the first time he was asked to help, and it wasn't the last. As Alex grew, though, Ben further grasped the idea of how to raise a child at least a little more confidently than before. Besides, as the situation with Widmore evolved into a bigger problem than Richard had expected, he only dwelt on Alex in the passing moments when he visited Ben and asked about her out of courtesy. One of the women was teaching her how to read, how wonderful, now what were they going to do if Widmore truly had partaken in strictly forbidden relations with an outsider….

She was brought up again, though, when Widmore mentioned her to Ben and warned him that the Island would find a way to get rid of her if it had never wanted her to live. Only a week later, Richard heard a knock on his door and answered it to see Ben in bug-eyed alarm, saying that Alex had fallen ill. "Shouldn't you talk to a doctor?" As much as Richard wanted to help, he didn't even have personal experience with sickness.

"Obviously I've tried that, Richard, and not one of them seems to know what the problem is."

Then Richard realized why Ben had come to him, and why his voice wobbled slightly. "You think it's the Island."

He regretted the blunt choice of words when Ben closed his eyes for a beat too long. "Now that you mention it, yes, it has occurred to me."

"Bring me to her." Richard tried to keep the dread out of his own voice.

Without another word, Ben turned around and shuffled towards his house as Richard followed him. Some of the Others stared at him, clearly unnerved to see Ben so shaken, and Richard ignored them. When they reached Ben's house, both of them walked up to Alex's room, where she lay in bed.

"Daddy?" She lay back against the frame of her bed, skin flushed a deep pink and gleaming with sweat. "I'm hot."

"I know, sweetheart." He disappeared into the bathroom and emerged with a damp cloth. Seated on the edge of her bed, he wiped her face with the cloth, and she coughed. To Richard, Ben said, "They say all they know is that she has a fever." They both looked back at the bed again. Her weary eyes fluttered closed as she sunk into sleep.

"How long has she been like this?"

"Since the day after Widmore left."

Neither of them spoke for nearly a minute. Finally Richard said, "I can't be certain—"

"Can't you ask Jacob?"

Lowering his eyes, Richard said, "He's never mentioned her."

He knew that Ben suspected him of lying, and he didn't try to defend himself.

"Well," Ben said softly. "Dr. Gray has been running tests on Alex, and she is expecting me. Will you stay with Alex until I return?"

"Of course, Ben." Watching Alex's father disappear downstairs, Richard wondered what he was supposed to do. He knew what Ben so badly wanted him to say, but he wasn't about to lie, not when the stakes were so high. Besides, Jacob disapproved of lying, though dodging the truth was fair game.

Though Alex had fallen asleep, the small respite lasted short of a half hour. Within that time she was tossing restlessly and occasionally coughing. And then minutes later she was delirious, or so Richard assumed, recognizing her vague mutterings as the symptoms of a fever-dream. He thought to himself that if she was supposed to die, he could not allow it to happen while she was in his care; Ben would never forgive it.

Cautiously, Richard patted her good shoulder in an attempt to wake her from the grips of whatever she saw, but she only whimpered softly and turned her head away. Her hand clutched desperately for something to hold on to: the blankets, the nightstand, and finally it fastened on his fingers. To pull away from her grasp would have been cruel. "Alex?" She twisted the blankets with an anxious murmur, and Richard felt some sort of strange twinge inside his chest. Trying to speak as gently as possible, he said, "It's alright, Alex. Your father will be here soon. Go back to sleep." Even as he spoke, he felt the clasp of Alex's burning fingers slackening in his hand. When he touched her brow, it felt hotter than before.

Ben soon returned, though with no better news. When Richard departed, he wondered, as he so often did, as to Jacob's plans, but thankfully Ben arrived at his house again a few days later and said that Alex's fever had broken. The stress had left Ben with a few early gray hairs, perhaps, but no permanent damage had been done, and once again the years passed without incident. Richard was just relieved that he had resisted the urge to lie, telling Ben what he wanted to hear—in fact, Richard thought, it wouldn't surprise him at all if Jacob had rewarded Richard by letting Ben keep Alex a little longer.

As she grew older, she caught the attention of a young man named Karl, one of the few Islanders her own age. To Richard's amusement and no doubt Ben's relief, she never responded to his efforts to pursue her, not even when he ordered flowers from the mainland and delivered them to her house. Perhaps, Richard thought, she distanced herself because of Ben's determination to keep she and Karl apart (in retrospect, he should have known better than that).

That day, he was strolling down the sidewalk past Ben's house when he heard the door slam. Halting in his path, he saw Alex storming out of the house, and her red-stained cheeks briefly reminded Richard of when she cried as a young girl. "Alex? Where are you going?"

"Away from _him_," she muttered, but only then did she look up and see who had spoken to her. "Oh, Richard." Quickly she wiped her eyes and laughed nervously. "Sorry, I thought you were someone else."

"That's alright. Did something happen?"

To his surprise, she actually began to explain. "He's gotten so paranoid about Karl, as if I even like him. I don't want to completely ignore him, you know? Not when he's so nice. But that doesn't mean I'm going to run away with him or something! Dad won't stop bringing him up, and he says I'm not allowed to see him at all. But he's, like, the only guy around here. It doesn't have to mean something just because I want to hang out with him one time."

At something of a loss for words, Richard noted that at least her words didn't run together so much anymore, a sign that she was at least a little less angry. "Well, I don't know much about that, but I've known Ben for a very long time, and I can tell you that he's most protective about the things that mean the most to him. It won't be easy for him, but I'm sure he'll come around soon."

"I hope so." She smiled ruefully. "Sorry for making you listen to all that. I know you're really busy and all."

"No problem."

About a week later, he found himself free of any obligations one Saturday morning, and set up his materials to work on one of the model ships. He peered through the glasses at the hull as he chiseled the extra wood on the sides to form the bulwarks around the edge of the deck. Occasionally chips of wood fell onto his clothing, and he brushed them away, humming under his breath as he worked. Sometimes the Others stopped to observe, but didn't disrupt him. Most of them wouldn't have spent their days off with such intensive work, but although it was time-consuming, he hated to waste time idly sitting around and always enjoyed the end result.

Suddenly a familiar voice broke his thoughts and said, "How do you get the ship in there when you're done?"

Looking up, he removed his glasses and set them on the table next to the hull of the ship. Trying to suppress his irritation at the interruption, he said, "I can't imagine you would find it too interesting."

"No, it looks really cool. I'm surprised Ben doesn't make these too."

Raising his eyebrows, Richard wondered when Alex had started to call Ben that. No doubt he wasn't thrilled about it.

"Can you teach me how to make these?"

"Are you sure? It's not easy."

"It's not like there's anything else Ben will let me do."

Certain that Alex would tire of it soon enough, he replied, "Pull up a chair."

Over the coming weeks, Richard and Alex met in what spare time they could find, and he told her about each of the tools and their purpose: the chisel, the knives of various sizes, the modeling enamel. He explained the use of putty for the sea, mixed with oil paint and shaped into waves with a wire tamper, sandpaper for the hull, and, to her amusement, clear nail polish that sealed the wood and varnished the deck.

They worked well together—Richard a knowing teacher, Alex a willing and eager pupil. What had started as mere toleration became patient instruction when she continued to surprise him with her attentiveness. She always returned for more, absorbing the lessons to the point where she could even assist him in small ways. Her brow would furrow in concentration as she turned the wood over in her hands and engraved it with utmost care. Finally, when they had constructed the ship, she asked, "How is this going to fit in that bottle?"

A smile spread across Richard's face. "Watch." Untying the lines that attached the ship to the work stand, he lowered each of the masts and turned the spars parallel to the masts so that the sails extended over the bulwarks and he could wrap them around the hull. The ship had been reduced from a three-dimensional model to a straight line, and Alex stared as he inserted the stem of the ship into the bottle.

"Get the tweezers." She grabbed them, and he showed her how to support the model and guide it further inside.

"I can't believe we're about to finish this."

"There's still a few more steps." He pulled the lines that raised the masts from fore to aft, aligning the spars, and set the model down on the putty.

"Oh, those lines are tangled."

With the tweezers in hand, he tugged on the rigging gently. "As long as there's no damage, we can iron out the details another day."

She sat back to survey the ship. "Wow, even though it's not done, it looks amazing."

"I'm glad you enjoy this as much as I do, Alex. To be honest, I thought you would lose interest long ago."

"Yeah, I actually didn't think it would be this cool. Thanks for teaching me. Can you can show me how to fix the rigging later?"

"Sure thing."

They discussed a later date, and met a week later to complete the model. When they had finished, Richard said, "Feel free to take it home."

Her eyes widened. "Seriously?"

"You've earned it. Besides, I have a hundred of these things." Though he figured Alex would take that as an exaggerated, he was completely serious.

"No way! You're the best."

He waved away the compliment. "You did a great job, you should be proud. Let's go show your father." Though she rolled her eyes, she didn't say anything else.

They arrived at the house where, the instant Alex knocked on the door, Ben flung it open almost at once. "Where have you been all day?" Then he registered the sight of Richard standing behind her, holding the ship, and Ben glanced at it questioningly.

"I wasn't with Karl, if that's what you think—"

"Alex and I have been working on this for a few months now, and I thought you'd like to see it," Richard interrupted.

Ben's lips parted in wordless shock, and he couldn't speak for a moment. Finally he asked, "That's where you've been spending so much time? With Richard?" When she nodded, he didn't ask any more questions. While Alex passed her father to set the ship down on a shelf inside the house, Richard watched the relief settle in Ben's face. "If you'd care to stay for dinner, there's a ham in the oven…."

"Sorry, I have to get going." As Alex walked back to the door and stood by her father, Richard noticed her lower lip stuck out. "Maybe another time." Then her expression brightened slightly. How curious, he thought, that it mattered to her at all.

In the coming weeks, he saw little of Alex, although Ben spoke of her once or twice. The situation had deteriorated, he said, to the point where she rarely spoke to him, if ever, and he had no idea what he had done to warrant such animosity. Richard had no suggestions, although he suspected that Alex probably had a pretty clear idea of what Ben had done to deserve her anger, even if Richard couldn't imagine what it was either. But then, Ben never made friends easily, so why should that be different with his daughter? "I'm worried about her," he said once. "She's become…unpredictable."

"You were never exactly predictable either, Ben."

"I suppose you're right."

Sometimes Richard still felt like a father, encouraging Ben to make the right decisions or offering what advice he could. As Jacob's intermediary, that would always be his role alongside the Island's leaders, but the fact that Ben just happened to be that leader reinforced the idea of fatherly guidance. But there were times he felt unsure, taken completely off-guard, as he imagined Ben did with Alex these days, the moments when he swore Jacob must be testing him. That night, he found himself facing one of those moments, when a quiet knock on his door awoke him in the middle of the night.

Groggily he sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. "Coming," he shouted, stumbling downstairs blearily, vision so blurred that he nearly hit the wall at the foot of the stairs. He cursed under his breath in frustration. Who could possibly need him at this hour? If Ben had come because of some fight with his daughter, Richard didn't know what he would—"Alex?"

She started to speak, stumbling over her words and rushing them so fast that he held up a hand and said, "Why don't you start again, and this time take it a little slower."

"Ben told me to get out. He said he didn't want me under his roof."

"And why would he say that?"

"He's furious, and I would go to Juliet, but she won't listen to me either. Somehow he's gotten her to listen to him. The only other person who would let me in is Karl, and if I went to his house, Ben would probably kill him."

"Alex, I don't think…."

"I promise, I'll be out of here first thing in the morning."

Richard breathed in deeply to collect himself before responding. "Get inside. But this better not happen again."

"Thanks." She moved past him and set her bag down near his couch. "Can I sleep here?"

"Sure, that's fine."

He started to walk back upstairs. "Richard?"

Turning back around, he said, "What is it?"

She walked closer to him until their faces nearly touched. Waiting for her to speak, he narrowed his eyes and watched her closely, and her hand brushed against his. He could smell fresh breath, the scent of vanilla in her hair. "_What_?"

"I want to thank you for all you've done for me." Before he could reply, she leaned forward and kissed him lightly. His blood ran cold and drained from his face, and within a few seconds, the kiss evolved into much more than simple contact. His thoughts whirled, dizzy with utter shock and the powerful reaction she'd provoked.

"Don't do this, Alex," he said, his voice hoarse with control as he pushed her away. The shove was harder than he meant for it to be, and she staggered back.

When he began to apologize, she interrupted, approaching him again. "It's just a kiss."

Pressing her mouth hard against his, she flicked her tongue over his closed lips, prying them open with the tip of her tongue until he relented without thinking. Her skin was so warm and the texture, the soft fingers that combed through his hair as he tasted the faint trace of berries on her tongue, made the blood beat at his temples.

The words Jacob so often spoke echoed in his mind, nearly audible: _choose, Ricardus_.

His body stiffened, and he shoved her away again, almost violently, eyes blazing with rare fury as he held her at arm's length. So many years of solitude had been awakened in an instant, and he didn't even dare look directly at her, instead staring resolutely at the wall behind her. "Why not?" she demanded.

Why not, indeed? He was old enough to be her father even without accounting for the hundred years he'd been that age. Letting Alex continue would betray not only Ben, but also the girl herself. _She can't have any idea what she's doing_. Maybe she knew on the surface, but she didn't understand beyond that.

But he still had not answered her. She swallowed and asked in a whisper so low that he almost didn't catch the words, "Is it me?"

Yes, and no. "Your father would—"

"My father won't know."

Was this all some rebellion against Ben? But Richard didn't want to ask, didn't want to know—he needed her to leave. Then she stepped closer to him again, and Richard shut his eyes, afraid of what might happen if he allowed himself to look at her. Countless lonely years had left him weak, and longing for what he must not have, not from her. "I'm asking you to leave, Alex."

"Come on," she coaxed. "No one will—"

"Get out of my house!" He spoke in a tone that she had never heard from him before, rough like gravel and more resolute than steel. For one long moment, she stood there in silence, and turned away just as he opened his mouth to shout again.

At the sound of the door creaking shut behind her, Richard opened his eyes and leaned against the wall, breathing raggedly. He stared at the door, and the space where she had been, and wondered how he was going to tell Ben about this if he could at all. How did one start a conversation like that? _Good morning, Ben, how are you? Last night your daughter showed up and tried to…._ Richard shook his head in an effort to clear his mind and started up the stairs.

Decisions involving the children of the Island—young Ben, and Alex, on so many occasions—were often the most difficult of all. But this time, more than any other, Richard knew with utmost certainty that he had chosen well. If she had been anyone else, or even just older…but she wasn't. He lay back in bed and tried to erase the images of that night from his mind. If this was another one of Jacob's games…Richard was going to have some words with him later.


End file.
